


When It Alteration Finds

by osprey_archer



Category: Isobelle Carmody - Obernewtyn
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dameon and I often walked on warm summer afternoons, his arm in mine and in his other hand his cane, swooping across the ground for obstacles. The walks calmed me: the warmth of the sun, his hand on my arm, for people rarely touched me – indeed, even Rushton, now.</p><p>Especially Rushton, now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When It Alteration Finds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tartanshell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tartanshell/gifts).



> This story takes place between The Keeping Place and The Stone Key.

Dameon and I often walked on warm summer afternoons, his arm in mine and in his other hand his cane, swooping across the ground for obstacles. The walks calmed me: the warmth of the sun, his hand on my arm, for people rarely touched me – indeed, even Rushton, now.

Especially Rushton, now.

Normally that thought, once roused, merely ached dully like an old bruise, but today it roused me almost to tears. Dameon squeezed my arm gently, and I could feel his affection warm as the sun. "Elspeth?"

"Javo had a new cordial this morning when I visited the kitchens," I said; "everyone was very proud of it, so I must try it again and again; and I missed lunch…"

Dameon laughed gently. "You are forever missing lunch. We should assign one of the kitchen girls just to follow you around and feed you."

"No!" I cried, mortified.

"Open wide, baby bird," he teased. I giggled, though my cheeks remained hot, and stumbled on a tree root and brought both of us down in a heap on the grass below the tree.

"Why don't we rest until you are less…bubbly?" he said.

The world seemed to take a long time to clear into focus again. "Perhaps that would be wise," I said, and wondered if the self-healing powers Atthis had given me would extend to soothing drunkenness.

Not that I was sorry to sit. I flopped in the sun-warm grass, and Dameon settled carefully next to me. I took a deep breath, smelling sweet clover and approaching rain. A yellow butterfly skittered past my vision, and I watched, so lost in thought that I almost forgot Dameon.

"What are you thinking?" he asked.

"It reminds me of walking with my mother," I said. "She would gather herbs, and I would chase after butterflies in the forest. She was very kind, my mother…"

Dameon smiled. "Do you remember her well?"

"Barely at all." Aside from the burning. I thrust that thought away, and said, "You? What was your mother like?"

He turned his face away, his shield abruptly iron strong.

"You were highborn," I remembered, though we had not spoken of it for years. "We have a list of all those Councilmen now; could you tell me whose son you were?"

"No," he said.

Normally that would have ended it, for at Obernewtyn it was an unspoken rule that we need not discuss our pasts. But I was giddy, and reckless, and curious; and I wondered suddenly if the rebels even now held Dameon's family prisoner, and if he grieved for them, if so. "No truly, I want to know; you cannot think I would think less – "

"No," he – snapped; I had not heard gentle Dameon use that tone. "No, they are not on that list. They were burned years ago."

"But," I stammered; I could not imagine the Council burning its own.

"You cannot think the disposal of Beforetime books affected only Henry Druid and his ilk," said Dameon, and his voice held a bitterness I had not heard from him before. "My whole household was burnt – excluding me; because, I was their defective son who could not read."

"Dameon," I said, fumbling for words. Cursed clumsy things; how I wished for empathy, to wrap him in a warm bath of love as he often wrapped me! "Dameon, I am sorry…"

But he shook his head faintly. "It was for the best, in the end. I was a useless freak there – even as a child I knew it – and here I have warmth and friendship and – " _love_, and an – not an image; but the sound of my steps, the smell of my hair, an echo of my laugh in his mind.

There for a moment, and as quickly suppressed, but it took my breath away. How had I not noticed before?

There are none so blind as those who do not want to see. Just look how long I had not noticed Rushton…

But seeing, finally, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to roll over and kiss him.

For a moment his mouth was a knot beneath mine, and his muscles tense as rigging ropes. But then his shield shattered like a dam before a flood, and I was swept up in a flood of love that left me dizzy and gasping, my head spinning with vertigo.

He must have felt me pull away, for he moved away from me firmly. "Elspeth," he said, high color in his cheeks. "Elspeth I am so sorry; I did not mean…I should not…"

My heart pounded in my chest like Gahltha's hoof beats on a wild ride. "Should not what?"

"Should not love – shouldn't _show_ I love…" he clenched his fists on the grass, and changed direction: "My shield slipped, and I think – you don't usually want to – I think it overwhelmed…"

"I did it because I wanted to!" I cried. "Do not think you control me, Dameon; I kissed you because I wanted to, and it is I and not you who am at fault…" _Rushton_. Guilt smote me like a knife. "If it is because of Rushton that you feel bad, don't; he ignores me; sometimes I think he hates me; you saw how he spoke to me at the last guildmerge," I said, almost choking on my words as bitterness rose in my throat.

Dameon spoke, with a calm deliberateness that almost effaced the pain in his voice. "I know he is cold to you now, Elspeth, and I do not know why; for I know that he loves you as deeply and truly as you love him."

And I did. My heart, still pounding in my chest, contracted even as we spoke Rushton's name. It hurt to hear it, yet I hungered for it. Foolish, foolish; Rushton didn't want me now, even if Dameon said that somehow Rushton still loved me.

Dameon loved me, and I knew that now – half drunk with cordial and sunshine – I could love him back; but when we went back into Obernewtyn, I would see Rushton in the gray stone walls and in the view of the mountains through the diamond pane windows, and flickering in the flames of the fire in my tower room; and even if Dameon and I were together my heart would be longing toward Rushton.

"Why must love always hurt?" I asked.

"I don't know," Dameon said quietly, twisting blades of grass around his fingers so hard that they left red and white rings on his skin.

I drew my knees to my chest and leaned my head against them, and waited for the dizziness to subside. We sat, as the clouds overcame the sun and the wind rippled through the trees and the rain began to fall. Only when the downpour had battened down the leaves and flattened our hair to our heads, when we were cold and shivering, did we walk back to Obernewtyn.


End file.
